Hyundai prove worth on Scottish colliery reclamation project
Hyundai excavators and wheel loaders clock up 40,000 hours at Comrie Colliery Reclamation Scheme in West Fife
FIVE Hyundai machines purchased by Land Engineering Services (LES) have clocked up 40,000h between them on the customer’s Comrie Colliery Reclamation Scheme in West Fife, Scotland.
The former Comrie colliery site is recognized as one of the largest areas of post-industrial dereliction in the country. A combination of contaminated land, large areas of hardstanding associated with the former colliery pit-head area and a 40m high burning colliery waste tip (bing), mean that in excess of 100ha of countryside are currently unfit for any conventional countryside use.
The project, once completed, will see the extraction of 680,000 tonnes of coal through the working of 52ha of coal resource. LES have used some of the revenue from the extraction for the treatment of spontaneous combustion on the ex-colliery spoil tip, re-profiling and the removal of dereliction on the bing.
To meet the requirements of the demanding project, the company has also invested £4.5 million in new plant, including excavators, dozers and articulated dumptrucks (ADTs) to extract the remaining coal reserves and complete the reclamation phase of the scheme.
Operating alongside four 50-tonne Bell ADTs are two 23-tonne Hyundai HL770-9 wheel loaders working in the coal-stockpiling yard. The machines are capable of loading 28 tonnes of coal into the road trucks in five or six passes.
Also working on the Comrie Colliery Reclamation Scheme for LES is an 83-tonne Hyundai R800-7A excavator, which was the first model to be delivered to a UK customer. The excavator is powered by a 510hp Cummins QSX15 engine and fitted with a standard 4.53 cubic metre bucket.
Elsewhere on site is a Hyundai R290-9 excavator model which has been specified to excavate minerals with its specially manufactured coal shovel (manufactured by Allied Equipment).
Iain Davies, managing director of LES, said he was delighted with the Hyundai machines’ working progress and dealers EP Industries. ‘The Hyundai machines are like workhorses – they are reliable and we have had no issues in the years they have been working on site,’ he commented.
‘The service and backup from EP Industries have been excellent. We have experienced 98% uptime with the Hyundai machines which is quite an achievement for any hardworking machine. They are moving 4,000 to 5,000 tonnes of coal and are digging out over 70,000 cubic metres of overburden per week.’
